It was a tough few days last week in Radio Wobegone. And it promises to get tougher in the days, weeks and months ahead. The base of operations for Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk is in serious hot water.

National Public Radio dismissed newsman Juan Williams for an on-air discussion he conducted with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in which Williams confessed discomfort when observing fellow airline passengers dressed in Muslim garb. Although the conversation occurred on another network, NPR’s reaction was swift: Williams was fired, and a hailstorm ensued.

Imagine if HBO’s Bill Maher had made a similar confession: That, as an atheist, he was disturbed to see Lake Wobegone’s Pastor Inkfist boarding a plane, wearing Lutheran clerical garb. Oh, wait, Maher takes potshots at clergy, church and religion, in general, whenever his lips are moving. True, the ABC Network fired Maher shortly after 9/11 – but his remarks were far more egregiously offensive than Williams’.

Perhaps an unfair analogy, since Maher is ostensibly a comic and Williams a newsman, but it does present a comparative basis on how thin-skinned and politically correct the suits at NPR have become. When it serves their purposes, that is.

You see, I don’t believe Williams’ comments caused his firing. His words only granted cover for his firing, a move long-desired by NPR’s leadership in light of Williams’ too-often straying from the leftwing party line. Whatever the reason, it is NPR’s method that is especially deplorable. One would be more inclined to understand the executives’ decision if only they would have considered their actions in relation to the dignity that their employees deserve. Pope Leo XIII, writing in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, provided a perfect vaccine against NPR’s current public relations debacle.

Leo wrote: “Should it happen that either a master or a workman believes himself injured, nothing would be more desirable than that a committee should be appointed, composed of reliable and capable members of the association, whose duty would be, conformably with the rules of the association, to settle the dispute.” In other words, Leo called for employers to demonstrate a basic level of respect for the people who comprise their company. Dismissing Williams out-of-hand without following such simple advice has left NPR open for legitimate negative criticism.

It has also raised the issue of cutting government subsidies for the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting enterprise. And it’s about time. Although relatively miniscule compared to other government-financed boondoggles, NPR should be allowed to sink or swim based on its own merits in the marketplace. Massive public fundraisers as well as corporate donations and sponsors foot the majority of NPR’s bills already. Liberal fat cat George Soros recently bequeathed $1.8 million of his personal fortune to NPR for the hiring of state-based reporters.

Indeed, NPR’s existence as a government-funded entity is an affront not only to secular free-market principles, but to Judeo-Christian views on subsidiarity as well. Succinctly stated, providing public monies to a direct competitor of private industry is morally wrong.

Williams, fortunately, was able to land on his feet. Fox News Network hired the revered analyst in the wake of his firing. NPR, however, may not be so lucky.

NPR’s hubris may yet be its undoing as a freeloader on the public dole. We can only hope.

The National Public Radio (NPR) executive who fired Juan Williams is behind an effort lobbying for a new tax to be levied on private media outlets in order to finance a BBC-style state media, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center Brent Bozell told viewers of Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Company” at 10:45 a.m. today.